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2014 LINGUIST List Internship Program Now Accepting Applications!

The LINGUIST List is pleased to announce the availability of a limited number of paid internship positions for the summer of 2014 at the LINGUIST offices in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Internships are available for a three-month period between May and August 2014.

Interns will have the opportunity to participate in the daily operations of the LINGUIST List and its parent organization, the Institute for Language Information and Technology (ILIT) at Eastern Michigan University. ILIT serves the discipline of linguistics by providing digital tools and services that sustain the scientific analysis of language and by disseminating high-quality language data and linguistic information. In addition to the LINGUIST List website and mailing list, ILIT manages a number of grant-funded projects that develop the cyberinfrastructure of linguistics; interns may expect to work primarily on the following projects:

(1) Language and Location: A Map Annotation Project (LL-MAP: http://www.llmap.org): This project began as a joint NSF-sponsored project of Eastern Michigan University and Stockholm University and is hosted as an ongoing project at ILIT. In LL-MAP, language information is integrated with data from the physical and social sciences by means of a Geographical Information System (GIS). Tasks for this project include map-making (using Global Mapper and Google Earth) and using the LL-MAP Scholar’s Workbench to style and upload maps. You will also be responsible to help develop a new interface for the map viewing facility.

(2) MultiTree (http://multitree.org): The MultiTree project is a digital library of scholarly hypotheses about language relationships and subgroupings. This information is organized in a searchable database with a web interface, and each hypothesis is presented graphically as a diagram of a family tree. Typical tasks for this project include researching language relationship hypotheses and entering this information into the MultiTree database.

(3) Endangered Language Catalog (ELCat: http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/): This project launched in fall 2011 with funding from the NSF. The ELCat project is responsible for posting data about endangered languages with evaluation from global experts. This information is used to confront the issue of language endangerment by allowing users to upload data and multimedia files regarding thousands of languages in order to document, preserve, and teach others about each language. Potential interns will be responsible for resource discovery, reading scholarly articles, data entry, and bibliography management.

(4) 19th International Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) Conference: This conference will take place from July 17, 2014 through July 19, 2014 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The focus of this conference is to promote interaction and collaborations among researchers interested in non-derivational approaches to grammar, where grammar is see as the interaction of (perhaps violable) constraints from multiple levels of structuring, including those of syntactic categories, grammatical relations, semantics, and discourse. There will also be a special panel session on “Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory” with a focus on under-resourced and endangered languages. Interns will be responsible for assisting with the design and printing of conference materials, assisting non-local attendees with finding local events, and other tasks to be determined by the local conference organizers.

(5) Grammar Engineering Platform Development: The goal of this project is to create an online IDE for morphological analyzers (and potentially syntactic grammars) where linguists are able to simply copy and paste their data into a form online, specify grammars and rules, and perform analyses and parses of data. Interns will learn about XFST, FOMA, Finite State Morphology, Context Free Grammar, Unification Grammars, linguistic theories, documentation standards, java, python, and Django development techniques. Interns do not necessarily need to already know about the above. On-site training workshops will be provided. If you already have experience with these tools, please make sure to mention this on your application and/or supplemental materials.

(6) Website, App, and Localization Development: LINGUIST List is working on creating a new website and posting system. Interns will help to create not only a new website, but also to develop applications compatible with the iOS and Android systems. For the localization, interns that have a higher reading ability in languages other than English are highly desired. Training on localization, app development, and the website creation will be provided. If you already have experience with these tools, please make sure to mention this on your application and/or supplemental materials.

Interns are required to work 40 hours per week, Monday through Friday, and will receive a stipend of US $8.50 per hour. Housing is not provided, although we are able to provide some assistance in locating accommodations.

International applicants must have a visa that permits them to work in the US. LINGUIST List will work with applicants to obtain a visa; however, this is not guaranteed, as the administrative procedures involved are subject to university approval.

Applicants with external funding or support are encouraged to apply to work here as an extension of the internship program.